


You Too

by infernalandmortal



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, this is one long trope okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 06:53:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernalandmortal/pseuds/infernalandmortal
Summary: “Get home safe,” he says awkwardly, like an afterthought.You don’t know what else to say but, “You too.” It sounds too polite leaving your mouth.He walks away. You see him board the bus outside. When it pulls away, you swear his eyes meet yours from the window.You look at the take-out coffee cup he left on the windowsill. When you pick it up, it’s empty.Johnis written on it in a barista's messy scrawl.Something in you smiles.





	You Too

**Author's Note:**

> This is one massive cliche trope so sorry
> 
> The implied/referenced self-harm happens in section V so please read carefully. It's a mild reference but I don't want to take a single chance. <3

i.

You really only choose the coffee shop because it's warm and quiet and those are two things your apartment is not at the moment, not since the heater broke and the December snow started piling on the windows and the music and noise from the second and first floors started drifting up to your third-floor walk-up.

It’s a small place, wood paneling on the walls in an artsy, slightly-disorganized contrast to the smooth floors and the mismatched couches, armchairs and tables. Their coffee is strong; you take it black and curl into the massive armchair near the window, sipping out of a chipped mug and reading over your assignments for winter term.

You’re there for two or three hours when someone flops into the chair across from you, letting out a sigh meant only for his ears. When you look up - and you didn’t mean to look up so sharply, but he doesn’t know that - he gives you a polite smile, then looks down at the cup of coffee in his hands.

He takes it black, too, you notice with interest.

Once he opens his laptop, you study him. He’s maybe a little younger than you, with high cheekbones and blue eyes. He’s pretty, you think involuntarily, then ball your right hand into a tight fist until the pain from your nails on your skin jerks you back to the moment.

When he stretches and stands some time later, you look up and see the sky is pitch-black, the street lights right outside the shop’s window beginning to flicker on. He shoulders his backpack while staring out the window, then turns his body toward you slightly, just enough for you to know he’s talking to you.

“It’s snowing again.”

You look up at him. He has a nice, sharp jawline. “Yeah.”

He looks at you. His eyes aren’t exactly soft, but you don’t feel the need to run from him either. “You taking the bus?”

“No, I walked here.”

He pulls the hood of his jacket up. “Get home safe,” he says awkwardly, like an afterthought.

You don’t know what else to say but, “You too.” It sounds too polite leaving your mouth.

He walks away. You see him board the bus outside. When it pulls away, you swear his eyes meet yours from the window.

You look at the take-out coffee cup he left on the windowsill. When you pick it up, it’s empty. _John_ is written on it in a barista's messy scrawl.

Something in you smiles.

* * *

ii.

You see John again the next day. It’s even colder, so you’re wearing your brother’s sweater over two thermal shirts, only one of which is long enough to hide your bad hand. You usually wrap a strip of cloth to hide it, but it froze overnight after getting wet from the leak in the roof.

Damn, your apartment is a mess.

Anyway, he’s there when you arrive and normally you would find somewhere else to sit, but that chair is right near a vent that blows warm air, which sounds pretty damn good right about now, so you sit.

He gives you another nod-smile and you grin back - not a real grin, but a flash of teeth that masquerades as one - and when you sit down, he takes a sip of his coffee and that’s that.

You're so deep into the eight-page paper you're working on - who the fuck told you it was a good idea to take classes during winter break and why did you listen? - that you don't notice him standing over you until he clears his throat and you flinch and blink upwards.

“You were shivering,” he says, a bit gruffly, and hands you a mug that may as well be a bowl with a handle.

“Was I?” you murmur so as not to disturb this moment, this strange moment when someone is standing over you offering you something warm and nice, looking at you with a furrow between his brow as if he’s confused or maybe worried.

It’s entirely unsettling.

He gives you a jerky nod and sits down across from you. The furrow between his eyes gets deeper when you start digging for your wallet.

“For the coffee,” you explain, holding out some crumpled bills.

He shakes his head. You outstretch your right hand, your good hand a little farther, and he shakes his head again.

 _I don’t want to owe anyone_ , you want to say, but it comes out as a “thank you” whispered into your backpack.

When you lift your head, a smile is fading from his lips.

* * *

iii.

“Shit,” he’s muttering when you sit down in your chair. “Fuck.”

You take in his angry expression and the way he’s slamming the keys of his laptop, and lean forward so he looks at you. “Computer trouble?”

He rakes a hand through his hair. “It just froze and I can’t fucking get it back and I have a project due in an hour and-“

“Gimme,” you say, reaching for the device. He hands it over and you look at it, tapping at the keys smoothly with your right hand and clumsily with your left. The screen fades to black, then whirs to life after a moment, and you pass it back with a proud smile.

“Thanks,” he says, clearing the remnants of anger from his voice. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Then, “are you taking winter classes too?”

Are you seriously talking to him? Your blood runs cold for a small moment, then thaws when he, looking just as startled as you feel, nods.

Your left hand is on display, you realize. It's resting awkwardly atop your knee, the faded bandana ugly in the dim light from the window. His eyes flick to it, then up to your face.

“Are you hurt or something?”

He says it with a tone of concern masquerading as indifferent curiousity. You look at his eyes and find the smallest hint of emotion and it’s enough to trust him.

“It’s not a bandage.” You unwrap the bandana, slowly but surely revealing the rough patches, fused fingers and that scar you never _ever_ talk about.

“Woah,” he breathes, but it’s an admiring _woah_ , the kind that meant “that’s so cool” in middle school. He reaches for it, traces a finger over the tiny stub near your pinky. “That’s really badass.”

You huff out a laugh that’s more relief than anything else. “Liar.” His acceptance of the worst part of you makes your throat constrict and you reach out as a thank-you and apology all at once. “I’m Emori, by the way.”

“Murphy,” he says, but you already know to call him John. “Nice to…formally meet you, I guess.”

You smile, a real one this time. Your stomach clenches. You feel like your skin is on fire, but the nice kind, the kind when you want something so badly and you know you’re so close to obtaining it. It’s the anticipation of the con, only you don’t have to con him into liking you because he already does.

“You too.”

It’s like the first day you met, only he doesn’t give you an awkward look, but grins, all flashing teeth and clever eyes, and eventually he moves his chair a little closer to yours, saying that the vent was warm and he was freezing, but he explains just a little too long, and do you dare hope he’s interested in your company?

(You shouldn’t dare, but you do.)

(When he leaves you his phone number, hidden under your coffee mug, you smile and text him right away.)

(You never stop texting after that.)

* * *

iv.

Thank God the coffee shop is open late on Fridays.

Otan is having a party and you need to work on your midterm, so you trudge the four blocks in the snow and single-digit temperature to get there, the thought of the chair by the vent and warm black coffee _and John’s nice smile and pretty eyes_ buoying you.

You had texted him before leaving the house and he said he was in his usual spot, so that’s where your eyes go as soon as you arrive. He’s standing near the window when you burst in, shaking snow from your hair, but you nearly freeze when you see him with another girl. His back is to you, but you can see her, all dark-haired, pale, fierce-eyed and-

And he’s angry with her, hissing between gritted teeth, and she’s got a vice grip on his arm and before you can reconsider, you’re marching over there, tapping him on the shoulder until he turns around.

“Emori.” He sounds relieved? Scared? Both of the above? You take one look at the other girl and do what you do best: act.

“Hey, babe,” you say nonchalantly, wrapping your left arm around his shoulders and looking at the other girl with what you hope is a vaguely possessive expression. “Who’s this?”

“Ontari,” she says sharply, releasing John’s arm and jamming her hand in her pocket. “You’re his girlfriend?”

“Last time I checked.” You keep your tone light, but wary. John’s body relaxes with every moment Ontari’s hands are off him, but you’re sure that if you checked, the place where her grip was strongest would be bruising his pale skin. “Is there a problem here, John?”

“She was just leaving,” John says, wrapping his arm around your waist, bunching the fabric of your still-wet jacket in his hand.

Ontari looks murderous, but takes her leave with a snide “it was nice seeing you” that implies it really wasn’t.

You wait until she walks past the window to release him, but his arm still keeps you close. “You didn’t have to do that,” he says softly.

“Yeah,” you say, swiveling to face him. His hand is warm, burning you through all your layers, and you feel like your heart is about to come out of your throat when you look at his face, now so close to yours. “I did.”

He releases you after a moment, stammering out an apology that you wave off, and insists on buying you a coffee.

“As a thanks for being my knight in shining armor,” he says, a smirk on his face, and you let him bring you a steaming mug and wrap his huge scarf around your shoulders like a blanket when the warmth doesn’t seep in fast enough.

“Thanks,” you say, holding the mug as close to your face as you dare.

He sits down in his usual seat, then looks at you. “So, wait. ‘Babe’?”

You laugh. “Well, I had to assert dominance somehow! I’m sorry, do you prefer sweetheart?” When he starts laughing, you continue. “Honey? Kitten?”

“Oh, fuck off,” he says, but he’s still laughing, probably more in relief than anything else. You laugh with him, and the peace that settles into your bones drives away the cold more than even the coffee could.

* * *

 

v.

He sits beside you one day.

You’ve been texting for weeks and flirting for longer, the incident with Ontari sparking something that feels suspiciously like a crush. Sometimes you wonder if you’re imagining things, but then he’ll say things nearly complementary about your eyes or hair, and you’ll retaliate with teasing, and sometimes you drive one another away, but you always come back together in fits and starts.

You think you want him. And it fucking terrifies you, and you know it scares him because you met his best friend Raven one day when she showed up at the shop to give him his car keys and she whispered “give him time” in your ear when he went to the bathroom.

Now, he’s sitting beside you, his arm _so close_ to yours and you feel like you’re on edge, but also like you’re more at peace than you’ve been in a long time.

So when he taps you on the shoulder and asks if a sentence he’s writing makes sense, you lean over to look. Your head is almost level with his chest and suddenly it’s very hard to keep your mind on the paper and not on how gentle his hand is as it rests on your shoulder.

“It’s good,” you nearly whisper, your heart in your throat. “It’s a good sentence, I mean.”

You know this feeling - not in practice, but in theory - and you like it, you like it way more than you should, you like it enough to want to burrow into it and live here until the weather outside is warm again.

You look up and your faces are inches away. He parts his lips and before you can say something, his eyes flick down to your mouth, then up to your eyes-

And then he leans back, blowing out a harsh breath and apologizing.

“Why do you apologize so damn much?” you ask before you can help it.

“I thought-”

“I would have said no,” you say.

He nods. “Okay.”

Nothing happens after that. You sit side by side and it’s awkward for a while, but soon he’s leaning over the arm of your chair to show you Vines his friends text him, and then you start talking. He tells you about these meme-loving friends, and you talk about the cities you’ve lived in and how college would be so much better if there were less tests and more essays and he asks, innocently, how you can type with your left fingers fused the way they are, so you get to show him your neat trick of reaching halfway across the keyboard with the longer fingers.

He reaches for your bad hand, touching the scar that rests like a rope right above the bone of your wrist. “What happened?”

You shake your head. “Nothing.” Your insides start to quiver. That feeling is back, that feeling that burns you up from the inside out whenever you think of him. It’s almost midnight and you’re tired, but you also feel so alive.

Something dawns in his eyes. He lets your wrist go and rolls up his sleeve to reveal the thin white scars marking his skin in even intervals like a white picket fence. “Like this?”

You want to cry just looking at them. Your only consolation is that they’re old scars and there’s no sign of fresh marks.

“Yes,” you say, and it’s barely a whisper, but he hears you nonetheless.

He pulls his sleeve down and touches your wrist again, lifting your hand so the scar is eye level. “Badass,” he says again and then he keeps his eyes on yours as he presses a kiss to the ruined skin, his lips trembling against your greatest flaw.

“John-” you start to say and he jerks back like he’s expecting you to hit him or run away but you surge forward to kiss him and as his hand cups the back of your head, you find yourself not caring about the cold or the shame or anything else except the warm skin under your hands and the gentleness in his lips.

“You have a tattoo,” he says, and your right hand flies to your cheek because yes, you do, but you wear such heavy foundation that you forget it’s there half the time, and he’s never commented on it before anyway. “That’s-”

“Badass?” you suggest with a quirk of your brow, and he laughs.

“Why do you cover up all the good stuff?” he asks with a pout. You watch in fascination as his pupils slowly shrink, revealing more and more blue. “Your hand, the tattoo. Why?”

You shrug. “The tattoo is so people don’t stare. I hate staring. And I hate this-” you hold up your hand - “more than anything.”

“I think it’s the best thing about you,” he says softly. After a breath, he speaks again. "You're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time."

You smile. "You too."


End file.
